Economic Development and Quality of Life Perspective

Advancements in delivery of services

Certain health services can be greatly enhanced via telemedicine. For example, home health services are receiving a great deal of attention and investment in some states. Telemedicine technologies enable home health providers to redefine patient treatment plans, as they are able to increase patient visits due to elimination of a significant percentage of travel to patients' homes.6 Rural patients can now have access to specialists.

Keeps dollars in the local economy

Telemedicine helps provide service locally so people don't have to travel out of the community for care. Spending on health care is an especially significant portion of any economy, especially rural economies. The more of those dollars that can be kept locally the better off the local economy will be. Standard economic multiplier effects also apply here -- any money spent locally ripples through the local economy.

Aids business recruitment and retention

Telemedicine provides the capability to deliver clinical services in the community. Locally available quality health care and quality schools are two important factors in the recruitment of new businesses, especially for businesses in rural communities. So there is a potential business recruitment and retention factor to consider.

Workforce development / jobs

There is a severe shortage of medical staff, particularly nurses, in rural hospitals.8, 9, 10 At the same time there is high poverty and unemployment in our rural communities.11 One way to address that problem is to equip local healthcare facilities with advanced telecommunications services for telemedicine purposes and then to appropriately share the videoconferencing capability in a partnership with educational institutions to train more local people for the jobs in health care that are available locally. Local jobs for local people could be a significant economic impact particularly for people who could not afford to travel outside the community for training.

Quality of life and longevity gains are worth a lot

Use of telemedicine can have a significant impact on individual health and can therefore favorably impact longevity. The value to the economy of improvements in life expectancy is about as large as the value of all other consumption goods and services put together. It is an intriguing thought to contemplate that the social productivity of health-care spending might be many times that of other spending.

Clinical trials

Clinical trials represent a multi-billion dollar business that could apply telemedicine technologies to extend the reach of clinical trials to include provider and patient participation from rural communities